Ian Mulgrew: Ivan Henry still haunted by 27 years of wrongful imprisonment

Nearly five years after he was freed from 27-years incarceration for sex crimes he didn’t commit, 67-year-old Ivan Henry remains haunted.
Wrongly convicted in 1983 at the age of 36 of three rapes, two attempted rapes and five indecent assaults, he was declared a dangerous offender and imprisoned indefinitely.

Nearly five years after he was freed from 27 years of incarceration for sexual crimes he didn’t commit, 67-year-old Ivan Henry remains haunted.

“My subconscious doesn’t go away … when you go to sleep and you dream about jails, knives and steel,” he says, “that comes all the time. It’s not every day, no, of course, but three times, four times a week I am in jail — I see the jail. ... But what do you do? You can’t get rid of your subconscious. What am I going to do — get a lobotomy? I’m not going to get a lobotomy. I’ve seen guys with lobotomies.”

Wrongly convicted in 1983 at the age of 36 of three rapes, two attempted rapes and five indecent assaults, he was declared a dangerous offender and imprisoned indefinitely.

“To be sitting there and believing this is all going to go away,” he says, still incredulous. “The joke is all going, don’t worry, it’s just a joke ...(but) the joke didn’t go away...”

Not for more than a quarter century.

After the Criminal Justice Branch identified the horrendous miscarriage of justice, in October 2009, Henry was released to appeal.

A year later, the B.C. Court of Appeal acquitted him, declaring that no properly instructed jury would have convicted him — especially when another man is known to be responsible for some of the crimes.

But he was given no compensation and is eking out a living and wrestling with the repercussions of imprisonment.

“Someone asked me what’s 27 years like?” Henry offered as he enjoyed the solitude of a North Shore park. “I said, ‘Well, you’ve got a pretty big bathroom in Waves (coffee shop) over there. How about locking you up for 27 years and I’ll let you out for exercise once a day, a shower — lock you up and see if you like it.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t like that.’ You wouldn’t.”

In 2011, Henry launched a lawsuit against the provincial government, the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Police Department officers who initiated the injustice.

But a civil trial is at least a year away, perhaps longer depending on the timing of a ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada after a hearing later this year.

Although legal arguments about compensation for a wrongful conviction should take skilled lawyers no more than a week to present, the city and province are forcing a six-month trial on Henry.

In spite of his acquittal, the documented institutional misconduct and the admitted errors, the two governments insist he’s not necessarily innocent — an ignoble suggestion that causes Henry to bristle.

“When I hear people say, ‘Oh, he’s not innocent of any of these (crimes),’ I shun them,” he said. “You never even gave me a (fair) trial. You don’t talk about (whether) I’m innocent. Innocent of what?”

Henry recites a litany of examples of how he was railroaded. It is a vulgar epic of official incompetence — and worse.

“Bad things!” he fumes. “They shouldn’t have done stuff like that. ... I have a conscience. Do they?”

Becoming “a civilian,” as he puts it, has not been easy — the mood swings, the anger that wells up, the damage of institutionalization, the scars of prison remain visible.

“I had many, many arguments,” he confides. “I think I told (my daughter) twice that I wanted to go back (to prison). Really, because I didn’t like to be demeaned. I caught my granddaughter cheating one time at Monopoly. It was simple, it was nothing, I would laugh at it now. But I was taken aback by it because I didn’t like to be cheated. I don’t care — small, young, I didn’t like to be cheated. I play by the rules, you play by the rules. And if you cheat, then I’m mad at you.”

His hair has thinned and greyed and it is difficult to recognize the man being held in a headlock in the infamous and allegedly composite 30-year-old lineup photo.

Today, Henry brought wildflowers and his infectious smile to the local baristas, an open, amiable grandfather with a quick laugh.

“I’m pleasant. I open the door for women. I have no hate for nobody,” he says.

“They tried to demean me and say I was mentally ill at the time. I knew right from wrong. I’m not mentally ill. I might have some instabilities that people out here might think are eccentric or that I’m not the same as they are, that I’m not as friendly as they are. Well, I pick up people pretty good and I can usually see, with people, if I want to say hello or not.”

He has given up coffee as part of his search for peace of mind.

“My psychiatrist asked me what do I think about people out here,” he said. “Eyes without faces. Eyes without faces. They’re just eyes — that’s all they are to me.”

From the time he was 14 until his final arrest, Henry was in and out of custody in Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba — dragged up by the street and correctional institutions.

In Jan. 1977, he was convicted in Winnipeg of breaking and entering, assault and attempted rape. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Henry served three years before being released in May 1980 on mandatory supervision and moving to Vancouver.

He was charged on July 29, 1982 with 17 offences in connection with a series of sexual assaults — crimes he swears he did not commit — and so began his 27-year-long nightmare.

Henry understands he is far from normal.

“I didn’t learn from my family because I was away since I was 16 years old in an institution trying to make ends meet, trying to stay alive,” he said.

“Like, hello! … There was no welfare. … I didn’t have no welfare — welfare was going into someone’s house.”

If nothing else, his ordeal has brought a measure of self-awareness.

“I know I’m mad, but the madness keeps me going, the being angry keeps me going. … That anger that I used all those years instead of going to the desk and yelling at the guard, ‘Oh, it’s all your fault!’ I didn’t do any of that, I sat down and took my pen and wrote a book. It’s ready to publish.”

Throughout, he maintained his innocence.

“The most serious, serious thing about the whole thing was, the reality of it, is I was scared to die,” Henry admits. “I wasn’t scared to die not in that you would stab me, because I was always watching around me. The reason not to die was so serious is I didn’t want to leave a history that wasn’t mine. It’s not my history. I don’t know anything about those girls, and those girls don’t know anything about me.”

Sometimes it was hard to swallow the bile that rose in his throat.

“I don’t know what compensation would represent,” Henry said.

“Giving me 100 million dollars wouldn’t mean nothing to me. I lost my mum … she was older. I would have been able to take her out, take her for a drive, go to the beach. I can’t do that, my mother’s gone.”

He paused.

“When my mother did die,” he continued, “they told me” — he holds his hands to his mouth to mimic someone shouting across the yard — “Hey, your mum’s gone.”

Henry chuckled away the pain that suddenly clouded his eyes.

“The next guy they did that to, he freaked out and ended up in the hospital.”

Sitting on a bench sipping ice water in the sunshine, Henry said he valued the time he was spending with his brother on Vancouver Island where “paradise was in the backyard.”

The best thing about being free, he said, was breathing the air — real outside air, not stale re-circulated air laden with anxiety, redolent of body odour and the fetid stench of caged men. “Just smell the fresh air.”

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